The Air Force has Area 51. A retired Navy captain thinks the Navy needs an Area 52, and he thinks it should be Lake Michigan.
A Madison startup just signed on to help make that happen.
On October 15, Dirac Labs announced it has joined the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium (WSRC) as an industry affiliate. Dirac Labs builds quantum sensors that navigate where GPS can't reach. WSRC is leading Wisconsin's push to turn the lake into a test range for autonomous ships and submarines.
What is the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium?
WSRC is a nonprofit led by the Wisconsin Technology Council. It connects the state's universities, technology manufacturers, and government partners around defense research and the economic development that comes with it.
The Tech Council also leads the consortium behind Wisconsin's first gBETA Frontier Technology cohort, so it has been busy getting deep tech companies out of labs and into the market this year.
Industry affiliates are the companies plugged into that network. For Dirac Labs, co-founder and CEO Sanket Deshpande said it means a direct line to the researchers, federal sponsors, and mission owners who deal with navigation failures firsthand.
Why Lake Michigan?
The idea traces back to a 2023 essay in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings by Capt. Jerry Hendrix, USN (Ret.). His argument: the Navy needs a secure place to develop and test unmanned systems, away from the adversary surveillance that comes with testing in international waters.
Lake Michigan checks a lot of boxes. It's the only Great Lake entirely within U.S. territory. It's about 300 miles long and deep enough for both surface and subsurface testing. And FAA-designated restricted military airspace already sits right over it.
Wisconsin has the pieces around the water too. Fincantieri runs shipyards in Marinette, Green Bay, and Sturgeon Bay. The Navy has run sea trials around Green Bay for more than a decade. WSRC is backing the Area 52 effort alongside the Sagamore Institute, the Midwest Defense Accelerator, and TitletownTech, under a banner it calls the Autonomous Heartland.
Where does Dirac Labs fit?
Autonomous ships and subs have a navigation problem. GPS doesn't work underwater, and above the surface it can be jammed or spoofed.
Dirac Labs reads Earth's magnetic field instead. Its diamond-based quantum sensors measure the field with extreme precision, and AI models turn those readings into a position in real time. The magnetic field is everywhere, including deep underwater, and it can't be jammed the way a satellite signal can.
Two design choices matter for getting it out of the lab. The system connects through the GPS ports already on aircraft, submarines, and other vehicles, so nobody has to re-engineer a platform to use it. And the sensors are designed to be made in existing semiconductor foundries, which goes straight at the size, cost, and scale problems that have kept quantum sensing in research settings.
A freshwater test range built for autonomous maritime systems is about as good a proving ground as a company like this could ask for. Deshpande said joining WSRC gives Dirac Labs a direct path to move its sensors from prototypes to the field.
What are Wisconsin leaders saying?
Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska is UW-Madison's Vice Chancellor for Research and has spent her career in GPS research. She called assured positioning a prerequisite for operating in contested environments, and pointed to where this technology is coming from.
“Having GPS-independent navigation developed right here in Madison is a real win.”
- Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska, Vice Chancellor for Research, UW-Madison
Maggie Brickerman, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, framed Area 52 as an economic development strategy as much as a test range. A UW-Madison spinout choosing to grow here, she said, backs up what the Tech Council has been telling federal partners.
“The research, the talent, and the industrial base are already here.”
- Maggie Brickerman, President, Wisconsin Technology Council
A big few months for Dirac Labs
This is the company's second major announcement since summer. In August, Dirac Labs raised a $1.8 million pre-seed for quantum navigation, led by TitletownTech, after about three years of building on grant funding.
Put the two together and you get a pretty clear picture. A company spun out of UW-Madison, funded out of Green Bay, now plugged into a statewide defense research network, all aimed at a test range in Wisconsin's own backyard. It's the kind of research-to-company path Jon Eckhardt has been pushing for with the founder forward vision for UW-Madison.
How can you get involved?
WSRC is inviting manufacturers, researchers, investors, and partners who want in on the Autonomous Heartland work to reach out at info@wisecurity.org. You can read the full announcement on The Quantum Insider and learn more about the company at diraclabs.com.
Wisconsin gets underestimated a lot. Quantum navigation tested on Lake Michigan is a pretty good answer the next time somebody says nothing gets built here.
